Saw this George Clooney film at the Tricycle Cinema on Saturday night. It’s about the famous journalist Edward Murrow (who I’d actually never heard of before) and his taking on of the infamous Senator McCarthy who orchestrated the hysterical anti-Communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. Oh, and it’s filmed in black and white – something I got used to surprisingly quickly, but I think that’s cause I’ve watched quite a bit of 1960s Doctor Who 
So yes – to be honest, I don’t think this film deserves quite the glowing praise it received – but it is nonetheless very worthy and worth seeing if you’re interested in that period of history. Or current affairs, of course, as the obvious metaphor to the role of the media today… although I couldn’t help feeling incredibly uplifted after watching the film about the role the Internet now plays. It’s no longer a question of a few corporations controlling the ability to get your message out there, although of course they still command the mass audiences, anyone has the ability to publish, at least in many parts of the world. Damn the sponsors, we’ve got Google.
The other organisation that came to my mind was the BBC. The speech bookending the film about the role that television plays is a powerful reminder that in Britain, our culture has been shaped by an organisation that is not dependent on advertising revenue and does uphold a public service ethos (at least some of the time!) to inform, educate and to entertain.
Appropraitely we ran into my History teacher on the way out – he was going to see the later showing. And my other cinema anectode was the labelling of the vanilla ice-cream as ‘natural’. That annoyed me. Why is vanilla any more natural than strawberry or chocolate? Stop the organic-natural-reallyreallygoodforyou-food nonsense soon please.
Also – have just completed my first draft of a rather tricky essay on another era in history – Britain’s role in the Middle East. I read it through and realised I know exactly what the teacher is going to say: too much storytelling! How do you avoid storytelling in an essay that stretches from 1917 to 1956 though?
Good night, and good luck blog readers. This blog post was brought to you by the correct spelling of aluminium.*
*(In the film they say aluminum. Aluminum?!)
It isn’t an incorrect spelling – it is a different word. Aluminum comes from the origin latin Alumen, and the metal was named Aluminum. Alumina is the accepted scientific name, but in order to conform with ium being at the end of words, some countries adopted Aluminium, although technically that is incorrect.
It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t like it that much
And as for the whole big corporation thing, if Goerge Clooney (it was him, right?) hadn’t wanted this movie, it wouldn’t have happened
I think my dad wants to see that film, he’s always been interested in history
Good point Alex – I feel the same way. Not a bad film, but just lacking something.
And GG, I think you’ll find the ever reliable Wikipedia disagrees with you there
Reguarding GG:
Get a life pal
who cares?
Words = Language = Humanity